Month: July 2016

I’m still waiting for the seismic retrofit design to be completed but in the meantime, I’m exploring the structure with a bit of delicate crowbar work. One of the first things I discovered had me running for the breaker box. This photo is of the main connection that powers the second floor. Can you say EEEK! boys and girls?

It was simply stuffed into a wall cavity with no junction box and I expect more of same throughout the rest of the building. The plan is to completely replace the old electrical so that I don’t have to trust wiring like this.

On a better note, the only vermin that I’ve found inside so far has been this little fellow. I suspect he won’t be much of a problem.

Oh, and there’s also mud swallows nesting in the bathroom light fixture but they’re too cute to be counted as vermin.

The best news is that I opened up the second floor ceiling to check the roof structure and I was amazed at how solidly it was built. The ceiling joists are 2″ x 10″s of knot free cedar and they are all 24′ long! They just don’t make trees like that anymore.

You can also see that the roof is sheathed with full cedar planking and that the attic space has plenty of room for the new HVAC ducts. Looking at how fresh the lumber looks, it’s mind boggling to consider that this was cut 150 years ago.

While looking for the water line to the hotel, I found this cap buried in the yard. Does anyone recognize what it is? It’s about 5″ in diameter and mounted on a white PVC pipe. I don’t think it’s sewage because a sewage cleanout would be black with a square nut on the cap.

While we are waiting for the structural engineer to figure out how much concrete to add to the hotel, I’ll take a moment for some back story and flagrant self aggrandizement.

My fascination with the Union is a mix of several background interests that I’ve had since I was a child. The most important being interests in antiquities, architecture and reuse of materials. This inspired many possibilities including building a home from scratch.

This is one of numerous house ideas that I’ve toyed with over the years. This particular design uses shipping containers as the structural component with the idea that once the sheathing and dry wall goes on, it would be impossible to tell it apart from a normal stick built house. I’ve toyed with other concepts as well such as rammed earth and straw bale construction.

The Union; however, has provided a suitable shell for my passions so there is no reason to start from scratch anymore. The Union’s architecture, both interior and exterior, is aesthetically pleasing to my taste and the building provides enough room for my other endeavors as well.

As for the other endeavors, I’m an artist of scattered interests. In other words, I try everything that I can. I started by learning wood craft from my father and went on to glass, ceramics and metal. Mix that with the interest in recycled materials, and it makes for a fun menagerie of creations.

This box was made of old book shelves and salvaged hardware.

The two lamps are assembled out of numerous broken fixtures that I combined to make whole again. The stove; however, was just a straight restoration so I take no credit for the beautiful design. My job was to remove a lot of rust and apply liberal coats of Rutland Stove Polish. Oh, and the mica windows are new as well.

One of the early items on the to do list is to take stock of existing elements that can be reused. The most obvious one is the bar with the drawback being that only half of it remains.

The other half was left outside until it was a lump of dry rot and beyond salvage. The trick now is to use the remaining half in a way that looks correct and not contrived out of scraps. To start, I’ve created a 3D model to experiment with different design options.

Currently, the bar is pushed into the left rear corner of the saloon which is probably not the original location. It seems like it was originally parallel to the east saloon wall but to make that look right, I would need to recreate the missing half of the bar which would be difficult and expensive.

Today we did a little bit of testing to see how bad the plaster was upstairs and got carried away in the process. The plaster is so soft that it just crumbles away and it seems like the only thing holding it together is the wallpaper.

By the way, those studs actually measure 2″ x 4″ and the lath was held in place with square nails.

One of the cleanup chores that has been a real pain is all of the paint that came with the Hotel. Many of the cans were partially dried out and others had never been opened but had gone through freezing temperatures last winter which renders it unusable. Since the dump won’t take wet paint we are drying everything out so it can be disposed of properly.

Now that we’ve moved out most of the debris and the structural engineer is deciding how to make the masonry earthquake resistant, it’s time to start designing again. Based on historically available colors, I’ve started experimenting with the hotel exterior. Note that having 3D modeling software is a big advantage for daydreamers like me.

I’ve also been toying with the saloon interior.

Compared to what it is today, it will be a vast improvement with very little change to the existing structure.